What is beautiful is good
(Dion, Berscheid & Walster, 1972). This statement reflects a pervasive
phenomenon that has been documented extensively in the social
psychology literature. Research over the past two decades on
physical attractiveness has suggested that people can think in a
content-free way about looks; most studies have asked subjects to
rate targets on a unidimensional 7 or 9 point scale from not physically attractive
to physically attractive. The current study represents a
refreshing and necessary extension to this body of literature, by
suggesting that physical attractiveness must be studied from a
multidimensional perspective, reflecting an emerging trend in the field
toward more fine-grained analysis of social issues. The overall goal
was to examine the way in which people psychologically organize different
dimensions of looks, and to link these identifiable dimensions with
both specific physical features that comprise them and the stereotypic
inferences that result from them. Like many other current publications
in social psychology, this study represents a successful effort
to tie together several theoretical bases in order to shed new light
on classic psychological phenomena. In the following paragraphs, a
brief review of the findings will be presented, as well as critical insight
into methodological specifics.
The authors draw upon a wide range of theoretical bases to support their hypotheses. Research on social perception and stereotypes (Fiske, 1992; Stangor & Lange, 1994) points out that although a single continuum of physical attractiveness may help simplify the world, the use of multiple looks dimensions allows perceivers to be more sensitive to the detailed nature of the physical attractiveness stereotype. Cunningham (1986) identified five categories of important features in the evaluation of physical appearance (neonate, sexual maturity, senescence, facial expression, and grooming) and the current study extends his work by identifying four behavior-guiding functions of multidimensional beauty perception suggested by several researchers: Sexual attraction, nurturance/helping, aesthetic appearance, and a "learn from" function. Each one of these functions is translated into a specific type of "good looks" dimension: sexual attractiveness, cute/girl next door, classic beauty, and trendy. Authors suggest that the construct of implicit beauty theory can be used to explain how people organize perceptions of female physical attractiveness.
The methodology addresses how people partition the category of physically attractive women, by asking perceivers to categorize 96 full-body photos of fashion models in a free sort technique. A distance score matrix was created which reflects subjects’ perceptions of similarities and differences among photos which served as input to a multidimensional scaling computer algorithm (MDSCAL – Version 3). This scaling system, based on subjects ratings of each free sorted pile, examined physical feature, appearance label, and psychological inference dimensions and provided a map that spatially depicts how people think about a particular set of objects (photos of fashion models in this case).
Support was found for many of their hypotheses. Results indicate the existence of a three-dimensional model of female physical attractiveness (it was not possible to depict subjects’ perceptions of the 96 fashion models in terms of a single continuum). As predicted, both male and female perceivers distinguished sexy, cute/girl next door, and trendy dimensions, supporting the functions suggested by Cunningham’s literature. Two major gender differences were observed. First, males emphasized sexuality in appraising female good looks, much more so than females. Second, the physical features and psychological inferences that go with varieties of beauty were more clearly established for female than male perceivers.
It is impressive that many of
the findings from this study help explain findings that were
unexplained in past studies on physical attractiveness. A wide
range of physical and psychological dimensions were used to
uncover the complex cognitive processes that occur when appearances
are evaluated. The free sort method that was utilized strengthens
these findings considerably. Subjects were not forced to conform
their ideas into pre-determined categories, and they were free to
create as many dimensions as they thought necessary to describe their
beliefs about physical attractiveness. It is not surprising that female
perceivers generated a larger number of sorting piles than males, since
the targets were female fashion models. This simply reflects
ingroup bias – the notion that members within a group
(gender in this case) perceive more differences within their
ingroup than outgroup members. I suspect that this would occur
with male subjects if the targets presented were male fashion
models. In future studies, it may be valuable to look closer at a
few of the single item factors that did not fit specifically into
the primary dimensions – doing so may uncover additional
primary dimensions that did not emerge in this study due to the
small number of ratings that comprised them. This may also be accomplished
by using male raters to generate the dimensions on which targets
were rated. Finally, this type of analysis must be extended to
include male targets, as well as unattractive and moderately
attractive targets, to fully understand perceptions of the entire
range of physical attractiveness. In summary, this article represents
a solid first step towards an integrative approach to the study
of physical attractiveness. The authors presented theories from a broad
range of perspectives (an emerging trend in social psychology), and
successfully combined them to uncover a belief system about looks that was
previously unexamined.
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